US WMD report: Dirty bombs, chem weapons are bunk

hmm

To use a nuke anywhere on this planet against civilians would cause the world + dog to be against the alleged terrorist group - utterly eliminating any chance of succeeding in other goals. Even China and Russia would chip in because as they modernise and become capitalist countries, they become targets.

At the moment you have the US + friends with commitments in and around Iraq and Afghanistan - that'll look like a turkey shoot because governments( who haven't, like the UK) will massively increase spending on forces.

As always, the only use for a WMD is self annihilation. I can think of a million better ways to 'terrorise' but terrorism is pointless by definition, it never succeeds in it's long term goals.

Penguins, coz when the shit hits the fan, at least we'll still have lin-- penguins ;)

You have got to be kidding

"...by the rogue US government bioweapons researcher Bruce Ivins. Ivins was, as one would expect, far and away the most effective bioweapon attacker."

That statement is a joke. In the US, the most effective bioweapons attack was the 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack where more than 750 individuals in The Dalles, Oregon, were infected with salmonella.

Problem with the Ivins comparison

It seems a little disingenious to use the relatively low number of fatalities from the Ivins Anthrax attack to say that bioweapons are of a low risk factor because the assumption is made in comparing those figures that Ivins was trying to achieve maximum fatalities and five was all he was able to muster even with the best bioweapons gear available to him.

Perhaps that was the case (I don't know the exact details), but it it equally likely that he was a nutjob who was very specificially targetting individuals and organizations rather than trying to cause mass casualties, it's not like he went out to a train station or shopping mall and started dusting everyone.

Also, Anthrax isn't contagious, so the sort of scale and casualties you would expect from an anthrax attack are going to be pretty similar to the sort of effects you'd see from a chemical weapon - only those who have had immediate contact with the spores are at risk. It might be a little nastier because they tend to lurk around and are a bugger to clean up rather than (for example) nerve gas which will dissipate naturally, but it isn't anywhere near the level of horribleness that you'd associate with (for example) a weaponised smallpox or similar.

This doesn't discount any of your other valid points - I just felt this one was worth commenting on.

Jolyon

Bioweapons

I work in the biotech industry, and it has always been my view that chemical weapons pose far more of a terrorist risk than biological weapons. Yes, a biological outbreak of smallpox or similar pathogen could be catastrophic but bear in mind humankind lived with smallpox until the mid 19th century. To be truly effective a virus would have to be specifically engineered and any in research will tell you this is a mammoth task and keeping it secret would be even more challenging.

Nerve gases to NOT all dissipate naturally. Sarin, the gas used in Tokyo subway attacks, does dissipate but VX has both a far lower LD50 and is a viscous liquid, cleaning up a section of a city that had been contaminated would be very difficult indeed. Couple that with ease of production (far easier than a virus or bacterial pathogen) it poses more of a risk short to medium term.

'cry wolf'

Thanks to a previous well-known cry wolf event ('45 minutes from Armageddon'), people will be less inclined to take this report seriously. So who has created the REAL danger?

@Dave Harris - Nukes are easy

If you have enough highly enriched Uranium 235, or Plutonium 239, making a nuke is trivial. The reason the stockpiles of nukes are difficult to make is because they can be very high power (500 kiloton average - but up to over 50 megatons), and also small enough to stick on the top of a rocket. New Scientist had a great article about 20 years ago about how to make a terror nuke of about Hiroshima size. The tricky part is making the fissile material, once you have it, making it go pop is easy. New Scientist recommended a basement full of concrete and a 3 story drop (the kinetic energy from the drop is enough to hold 2 1/2 critical masses together long enough - the concrete stops the energy dissipating sideways).

Chemical weapns are bunk?

Er, what about the sarin gas attack in Tokyo? It could have been much, much worse.

@AA

"If you have enough highly enriched Uranium 235, or Plutonium 239, making a nuke is trivial. "

Oh dear, oh dear oh dear, here we go again.

NO IT ISN'T. I'm sorry — it JUST ISN'T. It is actually a perfect example of a VERY difficult and challenging Big Science problem. You have to engineer the whole assembly very precisely or it WON'T WORK. NOT AT ALL.

Nuclear weapons are also incredibly hard to strategically deploy meaningfully and effectively. Much better, cheaper and destructive to human life to just engineer a virus. Or fiddle with enzymes.

I wish people would stop spouting this illiterate, uninformed drivel. Nuclear weapons are beyond terrorist organisations' ability to assemble. To buy, perhaps but not to build.

And getting the enriched U235 or PU239 in the first place is, like, obviously also a dead trivial matter to AA, I suppose? Well, in a world filling up with gonks who make statements like this openly it is probably getting a whole lot easier.

Next ...

Smallpox

Anyone notice that the genome of smallpox disappeared from online archives several years ago? Even if you captured an entire copy, how do you know it is smallpox and not cowpox or horsepox or .... ? Not like anyone has an SHA-256 hash of the genome (would YOU trust a mere collision prone MD-5 hash for something like this?)

Never mind getting it to fold correctly after assembly (genetic algorithms work good here) and a valid encapsulation (steal one from a different pox may work, then test on captive subjects).

I'd bet on something simpler, such as a bacterial carrier of a phage that just happens to have a striking similarity to the HIV retrovirus... with strikingly similar effects in humans. Pick a bacterium common in cows, infect them (they don't get HIV, but they'll shed lots of bacteria) and see how long it takes for anyone to notice the uptick in HIV... and track down the source.

Sure the oral route to infection is inefficient, but then there are billions of people eating cows so the law of averages is in your favor.

Remember what you mom told you-- cook your food well!

Standard assorted US-centric view of world detected

1st place -- Unfounded affirmation (except as given by the smoking laptop coming from a CIA-bankrolled terrorist organization) that Iran is "building the bomb" -- Check

2nd place -- Unfounded affirmation that Syria was "building a breeder with North Korea" -- Check

3rd place -- Unfounded affirmation that Russia is resurgent and/or aggressive -- Check

4th place -- Non-mention of destabilizing effect of confirmed Israeli "nukes in the basement" -- Check. Instead civilian programs in the region are destabilizing? Ah hold on, must be because no US contractors are involved.

5th place -- Mention of self-serving delusion that "Pakistan is an ally" -- Check

6th place -- Non-mention of the destabilizing effect that the recent US-India "sweet deal" on nuke proliferation has on that continent -- Check

Old "State of the Art" in Virus Regeneration

I knew I read about this:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2555-ebola-virus-could-be-synthesised.html

Alien because "it's alien DNA, Mulder"

@Greg Fleming

"Nuclear weapons are also incredibly hard to strategically deploy meaningfully and effectively. Much better, cheaper and destructive to human life to just engineer a virus. Or fiddle with enzymes."

Total Fail on your part for assuming that pesky terrorists want to destroy human life. Of course that is patent bollocks. The aim of terrorism is to terrorise the wielders of overwhelming power. That is all that is required.

The idea of "Strategic deployment" is simply void. If some towel-heads popped a crude nuke, whether manufactured or bought, *anywhere* you could bet that the stalinists in power in the west would have their own populations' arses in a sling before you could blink. Job done.

@Greg Fleming - mod + 1 for wrong-oh, sorry.

Nuke manufacturing wise, there are at least two basic options for design, the 'gun' design, and the 'implosion' design. Implosion devices are the harder to make, and are the type used in high yield boosted weapons of the type you find perched atop a MIRV. (because you can build them smaller)

Manufacture of a high yield boosted weapon requires a state. And a highly technologised one at that, so we can discount them straight off the bat. But crude weapons, well. The engineering challenge* for a gun type device is that you have to be able to machine, or otherwise form some of your fissile material with a hole in it. For implosion types, you need to machine or otherwise form your sub crit mass to a shape that you can compress with explosives, and be able to compress it, with explosives.. (Detail missing on purpose)

Obviously, you have to be able to do this without offing yourself, which is hard since both common fission fuels are perilously toxic and dangerous to handle, as are the conventional explosives required.

It sounds quite hard, I admit, but enough of my psycho rambling on the subject, let me quote to you from the book "How to build a nuclear bomb and other weapons of mass destruction"** by a chap called Frank Barnaby :

"A group of two or three people with the appropriate skills could design and fabricate a crude nuclear explosive. It is a sobering fact*** that the fabrication of a primitive nuclear explosive using plutonium or suitable uranium would require no greater skill than that required for the production and use of the nerve agent and released in the Tokyo underground."

And Frank ought to know, since he's a nuke boffin who use to work at ARE Aldermaston. Note here the emphasis on _crude_ and _primitive_, You aren't even looking at the kiloton range, more like the 100 ton range. Because we're used to thinking of nukes in terms of mega- and kilo- tonnage, that sounds quite small, but the equivalent of 100 tons of TNT going up will spoil an awful lot of peoples day, and such a device is likely to be quite dirty due to inefficient fission.

Sorry, dude. Great big megadeath warheads, no. Big badda boom, 'fraid so. It's 3 AM, do you know where _YOUR_ fissile material is ??

* It was only Big Science the first time. After that it's all engineering.

** Anarchists cook book, my arse. Granta, London, 2003. ISBN 9-781-862-076-778, pp 36. Despite the catchy name it's a level headed, candid assessment of the various types of WMD, their effects, and the level of technology, expertise and finance required to manufacture and deploy them. A thumping good read, but perhaps not one for air travel. Read it before Jackboots Schmidt bans it.

*** No Frank, it bloody well isn't.

Waste of tax payers dollars

How many American citizens have been killed by terrorist attacks in comparison to say obesity, smoking cigarettes, drinking excessively, cancer, car crashes or guns in the hands of stupid people?

Get your damn priorities right and quit wasting time and resources...

I'll take any coat, as i just really don't give a flying fark...

Bird flu transmitted via airborne means?

do the birds count?

mines the one being pelted with eggs

Still more likely to be domestic, as usual, crazy f-ers!

There are a lot of sociopaths that would be more than happy to spur terror within their own country in order to pursue whatever ideals they believe in, regardless of the lives lost (hence sociopaths). Many conflicts in the world have been sparked by 3rd party members tossing matches into powder kegs for one reason or another, and for what I can see that has cost the most lives. Anyone remember the events that led to WWI, ffs the politicians involved in that conflict were all related minus maybe one or two, the biggest family spat in history! People die for stupid reasons when war is involved and the peasants suffer the most (again, if you don't know if you're a peasant, you're a peasant, no matter how much money you make).

The report at least has been an improvement to the risk assessments conducted in the past 8 or more years, and to be blunt, is the same now as it was then. People hate the US because we let businesses conduct our international policies, so if people need to die in the name of "progress" (making a buck), then so be it.

We're already being poisoned on a daily bases by industry because it costs less to spew chemicals into the air, or put it into the food/water supply in "safe" amounts becuase it costs too much to dispose of it legally. If you can't see the smoke in the smoke stacks, then it's safe, right??? Why again is Florine safe? Why is it that a glass of water has as much fluorine as the dab of toothpaste that when I ingest it I'm supposed to go to poison control for advice???

"We are functional, we are efficient, we are prepared and self sufficient, and we only destroy for the greater good. So you can be free to consume more as you should and lead a better life... where is the line between progress and decline? Why is functional worth more and sustainability? We only kill for the bottom line, so you can be free to consume more as you should, and lead a better life."

We're doomed if we don't wake up, the more people there are willing to do more for the greater good, the more can survive the kinds of catastrophes that hit China in the earth quake, or rampant murder in the name of the status quo (i.e. War). When we finally hit Bosnia? That is what war is for from nations such as the western ones, war for the greater good because it has to be done. This is why so many join the military, and why so many that join and see the worst are so disillusioned. They only, like the rest of us, hear the extreme kill mongers and the idiot peaceniks from the media, which mostly, are unreliable in what and how they "inform" us of the fact.

If the NWO is going to happen, as it will be, then at the very least it should be created from rationality and compassion at the very least. When families are handled the same way, as we all know usually are (sorry to those with dysfunctional families), that methodology should be easily applied to the biggest family of all, the human race.

I know I might seem overly idealistic, but the choice of doing what is right and wrong comes down to the individual, and from their merges with the family, and then merges with society. The world has been part of the same society whether it know it or not for at least 1000 years. No time like the present to do it right for a change. And mass murder isn't an option, that's how families fall apart.

(*gasps for air*) If you sit people down individually, as I have, almost everyone will agree. Because it's the f-ing truth. I think Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammad may have been onto something.

OK I'm done. Good luck everyone, we need all the luck we can get over the next dozen years. What is coming will make anything we can do to each other look like a waste of time and energy, and the sooner we work together as a family, dysfunctional or not, the better. It will only be too late if all life on this planet is dead, so keep hope alive PLEASE!

@Mark (again)

John von Neumann visited Los Alamos in 1943 and suggested that high-speed assembly and high velocities would prevent pre-detonation and achieve more symmetrical explosions. A relatively small, subcritical mass could be placed under so much pressure by a symmetrical implosion that efficient detonation would occur.

Less fissionable material would be required, bombs could be ready earlier, and extreme purification of Plutonium would be unnecessary. Ideal, in your scenario. We all know that.

UNFORTUNATELY reality steps in here.

To assemble a workable device using small quantities of fissile material DEMANDS high-velocity and high-precision assemblies. A simpler gun weapon requires LOTS of material, is inefficient and is only practical with Uranium.

A Plutonium weapon in contrast, using shaped, highly focused implosion, requires tiny amounts of fissile material by comparison BUT if this is not done 100% right, pre-detonation will occur and your theoretical bomb will merely fizzle, emit some prompt radiation and probably just stop dead all within a split second. Fail. An expensive fail.

This is the very (big) issue the finest minds in physics struggled with for 3 years at Los Alamos, so don't use the term "trivial" to describe the practical limits of assembling working nukes. It requires a skill in physics and in practical handling of conventional high-explosives that is anything but trivial. The explosive charges in the casing must be carefully weighed, milled and shaped and at every step you risk blowing yourself up. You then have to put it all together and that assembly must be mechanically stable.

So why not save yourself the risk and just pop your 100 tons of TNT in a truck and blow it up. Because you will never get a working nuke to yield less than 1-2 Kt and if it won't work, it won't half-work either. A sort-of-kinda-works nuke does not exist. They either DO work or they DON'T.

Such scenarios as you describe are quite physically impossible to anyone but a highly technologically enabled state.

As I have said, bio-weapons are much more efficient weapons of terror. No terrorists are going to waste time engaging with the pesky facts and practicalities of nuclear weapon design.

I think you should though, because you seem woefully misinformed.

It's the END OF THE WORLD!!!!

"...a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013..."

Funny, that.

I understand that Global Warming will also start by 2013. And we're going to get Peak Oil by 2013 as well.

2013 is also the date at which all raw materials will become impossible to buy, and the world will collapse from over population.....

If I recall correctly, in the 1970s the date at which all this was to happen was 2000. And in the 1200s Joachim suggested the Christian era would end in 1260......

Chemical Weapons are Bunk?

That is pretty silly statement.

WWI saw a lot of dead people from chemical weapons.

Saddam was using chemical weapons to genocide the Kurds across Iraq for years. One such site is remembered here.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/03/16/sprj.irq.massacre.memory.ap/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_poison_gas_attack

The Al-Qaeda affiliated Chemical & Biological Weapons facility in Sargat, Iraq was one of the first places targeted by the allies... with confirmation of WMD destroyed and stockpiles of pre-cursors found, and confirmed cooperation between terrorists and the former Iraqi regime at the confirmed destroyed terrorist chemical weapons site.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3070394/

http://www.floppingaces.net/2008/06/24/msnbc-confirms-pre-war-al-queda-camp-in-iraq-tests-positive-for-biochem-weapons/

Even after leveling Sargat, Iraq, WWI grade chemical weapon manufacturing and other biological weapons facility for Al-Qaeda affiliate, Iran never released the Al-Qaeda which survived the invasion when they retreated into Iran, and al-Qaeda continues to cause havoc across Iraq.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/02/21/world/main2496898.shtml

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/06/iraq/main2655897.shtml

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6660585.stm

Sure, only a few of the successful chlorine attack by surviving Al-Qaeda in Iraq were cited above, but over 1000 injured and over 100 killed from multiple chemical weapons attack by Al-Qaeda terrorists in Iraq since the invasion by the allies. The life-long ailments suffered from lung damage to so many survivors is considered bunk by some, but the lives of Iraqi's affected are more valuable than the people who write such opinions.

I can't figure out whether media writers are just ignorant, terrorist sympathizers, or terrorists who have infiltrated the outlets.

re: Chemical Weapons are Bunk?

Yes, that IS a silly statement.

It wasn't made, but that doesn't stop it being a silly statement.

What WAS bunk (and is not a silly statement) is that we had to invade "NOW!!!!" because of WMD's and chemical weapons. Especially the idea that Iraq could have gassed London if we didn't take them out NOW.

That was a load of bunk.

@ Other Steve

"A group of two or three people with the appropriate skills could design and fabricate a crude nuclear explosive. It is a sobering fact*** that the fabrication of a primitive nuclear explosive using plutonium or suitable uranium would require no greater skill than that required for the production and use of the nerve agent and released in the Tokyo underground."

What a crap quote, anyone, trained in anything, can acomplish that in which they are trained, surely....